DLC – Your doing it wrong

In recent months all i seam to see is the big games talking about DLC. But they all seem to be “DOING IT WRONG”.

SO lets go over the rules.

1- No Texture mods – Don’t make people have to pay for a texture mod any moder could easily add to the game. Yeah some crazy person might pay $3 for effectively a texture mod, but to the vast majority of people just go “WTF are you insane?”

2- We Bought the game, so give us the game – Don’t cut features inherit to the game and then sell them as DLC.

3- DLC? Didn’t they call them patches in my day? – Don’t sell patches to problems in your game. Fix them for free as patches. DLC means EXTRA CONTENT, not FIXED CONTENT.

4- Easy access, Easy Install, Easy Reinstall – DLC should be easy to find and purchase, Easy to install, and Easy to Reinstall if you uninstall it.

5- Don’t Break the 4th wall – Don’t advertise the sale of the DLC in game. Have a link on the title screen menu, or have it as a totally out of game experience. Nothing ruins immersion faster than a 16th century merchant asking you for your credit card details.

6- Add value, or make it free – If you DLC is so expensive people could go out and buy an epic Indy Game like torchlight or Plants vs. Zombies for the same price, why shouldn’t they? I mean your adding a few features or maybe an hour extra game-play, while the new game might keep them going for 10 hours +. Price DLC relative to the compertition and what it provides, or better yet make it FREE. Nothing causes sales of the ACTUAL REAL £30 GAME like FREE DLC.

7- Don’t we all ready have the mod for this? – If there is a widely available and FREE mod for a feature you forgot to include in the base game, don’t try and sell it as a core feature of a new DLC. Either buy the Mod off the moder and provide it as a free patch, or don’t include it at all and let people just find the mod.

8- If in doubt don’t add Cliches – Zombies, Arena Mode, Survival. If you can’t come up with a decent unique idea don’t make people buy an idea or mode they can play in 1/2 a billion other games, and probably better. Be unique and make something that’s linked to and plays to the strength of the CORE GAME.

The BBC

There are a lot of people around who want the BBC shut down or turned into a commercial station. Mainly because paying a license fee is not their cup of tea. But Remembrance day reminds us all why the BBC is really here.

Imagine if you will the BBC is removed, and Remembrance day is moved onto ITV or something. It’s approaching the two minutes silence, the queen, the army, the nation is watching. When suddenly it cuts to an advert of modern warfare 2. or an advert for washing powder. or of anything. It would be the greatest insult to the memory of and to serving solders if that happened.

I am surrounded by idiots

So the server is pretty empty with only four players per team. My team has lost the last two rounds so i go medic, my least favorite class, in the hope that i can cover my team enough to win one round.

I’m a PC. ergo I’m a pirate?

This is the problem now a days. Most games developers feel the PC format is so full of pirates there is no profit in selling games to the PC. They release games on other platforms first to try and lure us to buy it before a pirate copy can be made for PC. Then once they do release it they will fill it with such ridiculous DRM, such as 1 install, always have to play online, always have to play with disc, always have to play on the second weekend of June after posting screenshots on the official forum of you sacrificing a virgin to the god of capitalism that you question why you don’t just get the pirate version because they cracked all this stuff 3 days before release!

Then they follow-up with below average server support or other ridiculous things and… well it’s just stupid.

IF YOU ARE LOSING PROFITS TO PIRATES REMEMBER THIS:  Ensure your product is better than the pirates.

It’s simple. if your product is better than the pirated version, your game will sell. If instead you add ridiculous restrictions the pirates get round before release date, and you don’t support the community with official servers, there is NO INCENTIVE TO BUY THE REAL THING.

I’ve never pirated a game. But the way most games developers are going I’m getting tempted. I’m bored of waiting weeks after Johnny X-Box has a game to play it officially on PC. When i could just have pirated it. I’m frustrated by over zealous security which pirates crack in hours, but I the paying customer have to live with forever. I’m infuriated by the stereotype that because I play on PC I’m a pirate.

I just wanted to be treated like a paying customer, and get a game that’s superior to the pirated version, and is released at the same time as other platforms. Is that too much to ask?

Borderlands… more release date blues

Of course the release date they show for a multi-platform game is the earliest. Instead of getting to playing this on Friday, like all the Xbox 360 and PS3 owners , I have to wait till a week Friday? Why? Because apparently the PC version of a game needs an extra week to be ready for actual retail. These are the stupid kind of delays which annoy me. They seem to be no logical reason to delay it a week.

Sometimes i wonder if i should buy these games for my Xbox. then i remember, I’ll get more frequent patches on the PC.

Release date blues

Someone linked me to a video of scribblenauts. It’s a puzzle game where you can type in any proper noun and that item will appear in the game world. You then need to use these items to solve puzzles. But there are thousands of nouns the game knows. So there are thousands of ways to solve each puzzle. Need to get something from the top of a tree? summon a ladder and climb up. Or a Beaver to cut it down. Or throw a lettuce at it to knock it out. Or a jetpack so you can fly up to it. When i was informed Cthulu was an acceptable noun? I wanted to buy it. When I heard “Rick Roll” would summon rick astley? I NEED IT.

I do a quick search on the release date. the 15th! that’s yesterday! WOOHOO! then i look again. the 15th is in the US. Here in England the release date is the 9th… Of next month.

Why do companies do this. They create something of such genius people want and then release it in america or japan weeks or in this case an entire month early. Why can’t they hold the release date till they can do a global release?

The last game I remember to be released in Europe before the US was spore. And we all know what the difference between spore and a bucket of shit was. (i’ll give you a clue it’s a 6 letter word beginning with B and ending in ucket)

Sniper/Spy Update

Way to go valve! some people had hope in you, yet you never disappoint! thank you for finding a new way to drive us all INSANE.

SpyUpdate

Spy is my second most played class, and the one I have most fun as. I’d not describe myself as a career spy, but when i do spy i tend to dominate the scoreboard. Any who the spy update is inbound. With It I get some new tools, but also some new competition.

Science

 

 

Graphs, they make the world awesome.

Rage quit

Rage Quit – To quit the game due to the rage created by the incompetence of your allies and the bastard awesomeness of your enemies. Let’s look at some reasons to rage quit.